Thursday, December 30, 2010

The other day I came into the shop and found an angry Pete. He and I had a little talk about keeping the shop in order. He asked me to pass on a few words about that. "My biggest pet peeve is tools," he said. "I'm tired of coming in here in the morning and finding all my tools missing." This is number one. If you use a tool in the shop, put it back where it came from. If you just found it laying around, and you don't know where it belongs, just put it back where you found it. Don't weld tools together, and don't weld pieces of scrap metal to them. Finally, If you use up a grinder, weld spool, compressed air tank, etc., tell someone so you can learn to replace it.

Hey, it's Tucker again, here with a special announcement: The Trenton Atelier is now making jewelry! Thanks to a little bit of inspiration by Renata, one of the friends of the Atelier, I decided to get back on my horse in that division. And so, now we make necklaces, bracelets, and whatever whimsies come to mind. An incomplete necklace.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

We ordered replacement screens for two of our laptops, and I replaced both, but the MacBook screen came broken, so we are waiting for a response from LaptopScreen.com. The other screen we received worked great and had no dead pixels or any problems.

I've also taken on the fun challenge of developing a flier/ad for the Trenton Cultural Arts Summit to be held late January/early February 2011 at Artworks Trenton. The Summit will be open to artists, activists, creatives, and anyone who is interested in creatively re-inventing the City of Trenton through the Arts and Culture. We've also been putting the whiteboard to good use, filling it up with our plans for various gadgets and gizmos, improvements on technology, and just plain crazy philosophical meanderings. There's always something new to see on the white-board. We have been using recycled whiteboard markers so far (ones gathered from college moveout trashpiles), but these will not last forever, so, we should look into eco-conscious dry-erase markers? or switch to recycled paper and pencils? Eli swung by the shop today for a metal-working lesson and firebowl construction lesson. He chopped, grinded, cut, and welded his way through the day. After many hours of learning and crafting, Eli's FireBowl was complete. Great work Eli! We've also been working on a modular bicycle-wheel cart (The HeliShuttle) for artist Albert Wilkins. Made from extended bicycle forks, pieces of a bed frame, old rebar, this custom metal job was created using mostly recycled materials. The cart must break down into several smaller parts, making it a challenging project. Today we decided to add shear reinforcements to prevent racking and add structural stability to the front wheels, which are stationary. Tubes and tires will be added tomorrow, and the cart will then make its way on to be fitted with the HeliShuttle fuselage.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Hey everyone. Tucker reporting in once again for another installment of The TA News. In apology for the lack of pictures from last time, we present to you a gratuitous amount of photos today along with a severe lack of words. Today, we had our Princeton friends come over and make us a delicious stew. Graham decided to make a Firebowl for his family as a present. Now, onto the photos! One of the sculptures we're making.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Today was focused upon getting things done for the guys at the Atelier. The first thing we did was start working on the truck again. The brakes are shot on it, and we need to replace the whole brake system eventually. However, for now we've decided to do a flush and replace the fluid. Getting the truck fully online will be an important step in keeping our heads above water, for then we will be able to do our own deliveries as well as travel around the East Coast with our wares.

After we paused that project, Pete and I did a photo shoot for the Firebowls. We got a lot of good shots out of it, and will be posting them on our Etsy and modernmetalwork.com site soon. Hopefully, those new shots will boost sales of our products, along with introducing the world to our newest bowl, the Flexi-Bowl. Be on the lookout for them. We did a lot of heavy lifting, chopping, and burning for the shoot, and as I write this, I'm taking a bit of time to rest from all that.

Speaking of resting, lunch was a delectable shop slop consisting of spicy chicken soup and rice, with a little salt to taste. Trust me, it tasted a lot better than it looked.

While we were downstairs doing all the heavy work in the cold, the Twins were upstairs in warm comfort working on PR for us. This includes creating our tri-fold pamphlet, networking with other businesses and organizations to see if we could be mutually beneficial towards each other, and listening to lots of music with violins and congas. Not sure why the last one happened, but hey, I'm not complaining.

Later on, we managed to finish clear-coating a good amount of picture frames. We've been working on them for a while, but with the upcoming Golden Nugget flea market coming up, we needed to finish them so we could sell them. They've been selling like hotcakes at the TerraCycle store in Princeton, and so we figured we could turn a bit of a profit at the market for ourselves.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Hello family. Tucker here, reporting for TA News. Today, Marc Linowitz from The Rose and Louis H. Linowitz Charitable Foundation stopped in, as well as our friend and business associate Keturah Monroe. In our meeting, we discussed what the future of the Atelier is going to be in Trenton, along with what OURSEP and the Linowitz Foundation could do to help it along. We discussed starting a after-school program for local students, along with providing a solid nuts-and-bolts plan for putting it all together. At first, Mr. Linowitz was skeptical, claiming that he initially had no intention of even coming here, much less pushing any money our way. However, after a bit of parlance and some good-natured ribbing, he seemed to like the idea. He liked it so much in fact that he decided, in the spirit of the season, to give us $1000 towards creating a proposal to submit to his organization. That proposal will, most likely, get us even more financial assistance. We thank him for his time and consideration, and soon enough, we'll see what happens next.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Hey, everyone. It's Tucker, and I'm back in the Atelier. After some time away, I decided that the Atelier was worth enough to me to come back. See, this project was important enough to see past the differences that came between the shop and I. The Atelier is slowly becoming a pillar of this town, and I was here before anyway, so...why not remain a part of it? The environment is a bit rough out here (it gets COLD in the shop, and food, if mismanaged, can be scarce), but all in all...hey, I missed this place.

So, in the end, I guess that all I can say is...BRING ON THE NEW YEAR!

Bryan and Pete had the pleasure of attending a brown bag luncheon (or as the PC amongst us called it ,a luncheon bag of color)with Van Jones at Princeton University yesterday. Development and Activists coexisted for the entire meal,though at the end it appeared that Jones was trying to oversell himself to the development side .

Brought up some very interesting topics,one of which still haunts me, was that when Barrack first took office a Great Depression was a middle ground scenario.With what we have now as a best possible option,and a US economy sucking down the rest of the world in a vortex of hyper-inflation and general yucky stuff.

who knows?

After that the B Home project convened on the Engineering Quad ,where Wole assembled his geek squad and got them cracking on a presentation for Deans Day.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

With the advent of winter, we have been enjoying the company of friends and family alike. The compost stream from Whole Earth and Dunkin Donuts has been helping to sustain our activities and preparations for spring planting.

The post-compost waste compost pile we have been amassing next to our shop has been steadily growing for the past several months and is steaming with life and activity inside. For those of you that may not know, compost piles increase biological activity in the decaying matters, helping to speed the breakdown of materials into nutrient-rich soil. Our pile is looking very nice!

Bryan works to turn the pile over onto some leaves, fresh organic matter, and sustainably sourced cardboard (locally-sourced plant fibers!) With the help of mother nature and some winter freeze-thaw cycles our soil mound will be ready for the spring planting efforts.

Our friendly city garden waste removal crew conveniently piled organic matter a few yards away from our facility, which we are glad to use for soil-building activities.

We also brought in the rolls of WTC wire rope from out back. The Wooden rolls they are wrapped around have historical significance to Bethlehem, where steel industry boomed in the second half of the 19th century through the early 20th century. (obligatory Wikipedia link here.)